Man yells ‘Heil Hitler’ after fatally shooting 3 at Jewish centers

Taken into custody after shooting Jewish people and reportedly yelling “Heil Hitler!” when arrested.

In what is increasingly shaping up as a hate crime, a heavyset man in his 70s has been taken into custody after shootings at two Jewish community sites in the Kansas City area. He killed three people — one of them a 14-year old boy. Among the three dead were a grandfather and his grandson, the 14-year-old. (UPDATE:“Law enforcement officials identified the alleged shooter as 73-year-old Frasier Glenn Cross, Jr, from Missouri, according to NBC News.”)

According to one account, the shooter also asked people if they were Jewish. If they said yes, he shot them.

Unless it turns out to be one of those details that are reported after a crime but proves to be false, if someone shows up at Jewish community sites, asks them if they were Jewish and shoots them if they answer in the affirmative and then yells “Heil Hitler” after shooting them right before Passover, yes, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to conclude it is indeed a hate crime. You can safely conclude he is not invited to too many bar mitzvahs.

A man yelled, “Heil Hitler,” after he was taken into custody in connection with the Passover Eve fatal shooting of three at two Jewish-related sites in the Kansas City area.

Two males were killed outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. A female was killed a few minutes later in the parking lot at Village Shalom, an assisted living facility.

The suspect shot at two other people, but the bullets did not hit them, said Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass.

The victims apparently did not know their killer, Douglass said.
Apparently the suspect fired a dozen of or shots.

The suspect is a man in his 70s who wasn’t known to Overland Park authorities before Sunday. He is not from Kansas. His vehicle apparently had Missouri plates. Douglass wouldn’t say whether the man, who is being held at the Johnson County Jail, is from Missouri.

Douglass also wouldn’t say whether the shootings were anti-Semitic hate crimes. He said authorities are evaluating comments that the suspect made after he was arrested.

It is a joint federal-state investigation with the offices of U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom and Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe involved.

The Kansas City Star reported that the two killed at JCC were a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather who attend the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood. Prayers were held during the church’s evening Palm Sunday service.

The boy was rushed to Overland Park Regional Medical Center for surgery, but would die from his injuries.

The suspect was arrested at the Valley View Park Elementary School, which is a mile away from Village Shalom. KCTV5′s Bonyen Lee says the suspect appeared to yell “Heil Hitler” as he was being led away in handcuffs by Overland Park police.

A smirking gunman who reportedly shouted Nazi slogans opened fire at a Jewish community center and an old-age home in a suburb of Kansas City, killing three people.

The gunman, said to be an older man, singled out Jewish victims for death, Rabbi Herbert Mandl, a chaplain with the Overland Park Police Department, told CNN.

“Asking someone if you are Jewish before shooting sounds very much like a hate crime,” Mandl said.

Police said two people were killed at the JCC of Greater Kansas City, where children were auditioning for a musical. Despite Mandl’s assertion, the JCC victims were identified as a churchgoing teenage boy and his grandfather.

Rev. Adam Hamilton shared the tragic news at an evening Palm Sunday service at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., the Kansas City Star reported.

“Help us, oh, Lord to grieve as people of hope,” Hamilton told congregants, the paper said.

A 41 Action News photographer on the scene spoke with Mark Brodky, a member at the JCC, who says another man pointed a gun at him and shot the windows out of his car, “I thought he was shooting an air rifle and all the sudden he shot at me.”

The Jewish Community Center, which is also the site of Kansas City’s only Jewish community day school, the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, was a hub of activity on Sunday. Several youth groups were meeting, some people were auditioning in the facility’s theater for an upcoming music production, people were exercising in the center’s gym, and the academy was preparing for a school dance.

Rabbi Herbert Mandl, who works with the Overland Park police, told CNN that the gunman asked people if they were Jewish.

“If you answered yes, you were shot,” Mandl said.

The man taken into custody was apprehended at a nearby elementary school and was heard yelling “Heil Hitler,” according to KSHB-TV.

An eyewitness told Fox News that a man wielding a shotgun opened fire in the JCC theater, where the auditions for the show were underway.

“My son and I were walking into the Jewish Community Center this afternoon for an umpire clinic, around the west side, and all of the sudden we heard a gunshot, a pretty loud gunshot,” Mike Metcalf, an area resident, told Fox News. “I turned to look to my right and I can see a man standing outside a car with a shotgun, what to me looked like a shotgun, and there was somebody laying on the ground.”

A JCC member, Mark Brodky, told a KSHB photographer that the gunman shot the windows out of his car after pointing the gun at him.

The assisted-living center remained under lockdown following the attack, which came a day before the start of Passover on Monday evening. A police officer outside the B’nai Jehudah congregation said units have been sent to other Jewish facilities as a precaution.

Hopefully ‘gun control’ becomes an issue in the November elections too.

We’ve allowed 12% of the population (crazy, obsessive, boys with toys gun nuts) to dictate what should and/or should not be done about the insane violence sweeping the nation and it’s time for it to stop.

It’s time for all of us (right and left) to wake up, get off our partisan back-sides, and do something to correct this insanity.

petew

Yes, fact checkers are generally valuable and correct, but not always right. I also disagree with (was it The Washington Post’s) labeling Obama’s lie about anyone being able to keep their old insurance if they liked it, as rating a big double Pinocchio award? At the most, it should have been labeled only as misleading or as partially true. But the President should also have known better and should have tried to represent the actual facts more accurately since negative political fallout was a very likely result.

I also think FactCheck.org was incorrect to blame the debt ceiling crisis and the government shutdown, equally on both Republicans and Democrats. If anything, the President observed a dangerous fire and pulled a fire alarm. His only other alternative would have been to grant the demands of Norquist’s legislative Mafia (The Tea Party) and place established Congressional rules governing the legislative process in jeopardy! He also would have established a precedent allowing political extortion attempts from legislators, in order to take the government hostage—just to secure their own demands—not to mention that the GOP’s demands about the ACA involved arbitrarily destroying or dismembering a legally passed bill, as well as one that had been largely upheld by the Supreme Court as the law of the land!

The ones behind these illegal power plays truly revealed themselves for the power hungry thugs that they are! And, sorry Ted and Grover, the law does not require bi-partisan support to pass a law, only the approval of a majority in both houses of Congress as well as the President!

I think you are right Ron, to indicate the fallibility of fact checkers and their tendency to sugar coat, or add vinegar to some of their judgments in order not to be accused of being biased. But although Democrats do sometimes lie, and do sometimes misinform, it is telling that the existence of so many more offenses on the part of Republicans now requires fact checkers to adjust their decisions in order to avoid being labeled as biased for just for reporting the truth.

The same is true about climate change and the unnecessary obedience which the press acquiesces to, in order to minimize the views of deniers and their lies—when reporters try NOT to appear as condoning any unbalanced converge.

When reporters do stories about the Nazi horrors during WWII, do they really need to publish an equal amount of articles written by modern Neo-Nazis who deny that the Holocaust ever happened? Of course not—because we all know that such an assertion is clearly untrue, and requires a deliberate lie in order to report as being merely manufactured history! That’s why the Press and its dedication to free and accurate reporting should override the relatively minor possibility of offending anyone, in cases like these. Fact checkers could also realize that reporting the truth really does trump any need to provide UNFAIR balance concerning issues which we all now know did happened and, are objectively verifiable!

petew

I have no idea how my comment above ended up on the article about A Nazi on a rampage. I clicked onto the latest post about fact checkers by Ron Chusid and read the article about their limitations at the top of the comment thread?

Please excuse this error, I don’t know how it happened.

sheknows

“Douglass also wouldn’t say whether the shootings were anti-Semitic hate crimes. He said authorities are evaluating comments that the suspect made after he was arrested.”

Is Douglass really a police chief?? Seems awfully dense and rather stupid to have risen that far in the force.
“Asking someone if you are Jewish before shooting sounds very much like a hate crime,” Mandl said.

Not to mention yelling “Heil Hitler”. Will this latest shooting spree have any bearing on gun control legislation? I seriously doubt it.

SteveK

Back to the point… Giving everyone a gun and then defending them for killing our baby’s is ‘F’ing INSANE.

Edit to add: Our ‘rights’ ought to be annealed with the ‘heat’ of what is so obviously wrong.

http://www.liberalvaluesblog.com Ron Chusid

pete,

I replied to your comment back on the post it was intended for.

http://www.liberalvaluesblog.com Ron Chusid

SteveK,

It should be an issue, but if guns have not become an issue after all the other episodes of gun violence we have seen, I doubt this will change anything. Part of the problem is intensity. There are far more people on the right who think that their right to own guns is one of the most important issues and they are in total denial of the consequences.